Things near & far
the “Lady’s Pictorial” should have left out the “gruesome” and
the “ghastly” and also, I am inclined to think, the “disgust.”
There are readers who like the gruesome and the ghastly; there are
readers whose curiosity is stimulated by the term “disgust.” I am
afraid, for example, that if the account of legal proceedings, civil
or criminal, is headed “Disgusting Details,” there are minds so
prurient as to be rather attracted than repelled, and I am sure that
the gentle scribe of the “Lady’s Pictorial” did not wish to paint
my little book in attractive colours. And so with the “Manchester
Guardian.” “Ridiculous” is admirable; but “acutely and intentionally
disagreeable” is something of a signal set to attract those prurient
readers whose existence I have regretted; and the last sentence
says too much. Mr. Harry Quilter, something of a figure in those
days, did better. He pointed out in an article in the “Contemporary
Review”--also something of a figure in those days--that the only
explanation he could give of such favourable notices as the book
had received was that the author must have a great many friends
engaged in journalism. I wrote a temperate letter to Mr. Quilter in
which I said I was very sorry, but I didn’t know any journalists at
all--which happened to be the truth. He wrote back to remind me, as
he said, that there was “an Inmost Light to which you may yet be
true”--“The Inmost Light” is the title of a tale which was included
in the first edition of “The Great God Pan.”
--One of the saddest books in the world is Mrs. Gaskell’s wonderful
“Life of Charlotte Brontë.” But there is one tragi-comical touch.
Poor valiant, simple, stricken Charlotte was being entertained in
town by Mr. and Mrs. Smith. There was a dinner-party, given, I
suppose, in her honour, and she writes to an old friend:
“There were only seven gentlemen at dinner besides Mr. Smith, but of
these five were critics--men more dreaded in the world of letters
than you can conceive. I did not know how much their presence and
conversation had excited me till they were gone, and the reaction
commenced. When I had retired for the night, I wished to sleep--the
effort to do so was vain. I could not close my eyes. Night passed;
morning came, and I rose without having known a moment’s slumber.”
Who were these terrible five? We do not know, and it is possible
enough that if we heard their names we should not have heard of their
names, though, likely enough, George Henry Lewes was one of them. It
is odd and pathetic too to think that a great woman such as Charlotte
Brontë should have allowed the brilliant repartees and tremendous
reputation of George Henry Lewes to break her rest. And just before
this passage there is another, as strange and as pathetic. A severe
review of “Shirley” appeared in “The Times.” Mr. and Mrs. Smith
kindly “mislaid” the paper. But Charlotte insisted on pressing the
thorn to her bosom. She would see “The Times.”
“Mrs. Smith took her work, and tried not to observe the
countenance, which the other tried to hide between the huge
sheets; but she could not help becoming aware of tears
stealing down the face and dropping on the lap.”
And all over a review, an unfavourable review! It is very strange,
or, at least, it seems so to me, since, like Jim the nigger, I don’t
never cry ska’sely over reviews, and I have always contrived to get
my usual sleep.
But I have left out one curious specimen of the “Great God Pan”
reviews, a specimen which leads up to a curious passage. The
“Westminster Review” said:
“It is an incoherent nightmare of sex and the supposed
horrible mysteries behind it, such as might conceivably
possess a man who was given to a morbid brooding over
these matters, but which would soon lead to insanity if
unrestrained ... innocuous from its absurdity.”
I was talking over old literary doings and the affairs of the
’nineties with a friend one day in the spring of 1921. My friend was
asking me about my early books and their reception. I gave him a
lurid account of the castigations which I had received on account of
“The Great God Pan.”
“Why,” said I, “the ‘Westminster’ practically told me that if I
didn’t take care I should end up in a lunatic asylum.”
“Well,” replied the man, meaning to be funny, “haven’t you? I
understood you were at Carmelite House?”
“No,” I returned, also meaning to be funny, “I haven’t. All the
lunatic asylums that I’ve heard of have been managed by a _doctor_.”
* * * * *
During the latter part of my stay in the country (1891–93) I wrote
two books. I have forgotten the names of both of them. They were very
bad, and I tore them up, with the exception of one episode--to put it
mildly, not a very good story--which appears in “The Three Impostors”
under the title of “The Novel of the Dark Valley.” And it was in the
early spring of 1894 that I set about the writing of the said “Three
Impostors,” a book which testifies to the vast respect I entertained
for the fantastic, “New Arabian Nights” manner of R. L. Stevenson,
to those curious researches in the by-ways of London which I have
described already, and also, I hope, to a certain originality of
experiment in the tale of terror, as exemplified in the stories of
the Professor who was taken by the fairies, and of the young student
of law who swallowed the White Powder. And when I had finished, with
a sort of recognition that I had squeezed this particular orange to
death, I remember saying to my old friend A. E. Waite: “I shall never
give anybody a White Powder again.” And then I was immediately called
on to do that very thing which I had vowed I would not do. I actually
got an “order,” and--this shews that I was a mere intruder, not a
true craftsman--I have rarely been so miserable, miserable that is,
as a man of letters, in my life.
It was like this. As I have remarked, “The Great God Pan” had made
a storm in a Tiny Tot’s teacup. And about the same time, a young
gentleman named H. G. Wells had made a very real, and a most deserved
sensation with a book called “The Time Machine”; a book indeed. And a
new weekly paper was projected by Mr. Raven Hill and Mr. Girdlestone,
a paper that was to be called “The Unicorn.” And both Mr. Wells and
myself were asked to contribute; I was to do a series of horror
stories. I won’t deny that I swelled a little and was cheered and
elated by the fact of my being asked to write by anybody; nay, I
really tried my best to feel important and puffed up. And then I
set about writing that series of tales of horror. I was not puffed
up for long. As I say, I had realised that for me the Stevensonian
manner was ended. And now I was to begin all over again; to recook
that cabbage which was already boiled to death! I wrote four stories
in a kind of agony, my pen shrieking “rubbish!” at me with every
stroke. I remember literally sobbing in a kind of hysteria of despair
with my head on my hands; and this shews that there are some men
who cannot be helped. The only thing that got me through at all
was an endeavour to transplant the manner of Apuleius into English
soil; but the four tales were sorry things when all was said. I
was glad when “The Unicorn” ceased to exist after two or three
numbers, before a single one of those tales of mine had appeared in
it. Mr. Wells had one story in “The Unicorn,” “The Cone,” which he
reprinted in the collection called “The Country of the Blind.” Such
was the affair, and I think it explains the irritation which I have
always experienced when I have been asked to write a continuation
of “The Three Impostors,” or something in the manner of “The Three
Impostors.” I knew that all this was done and ended; that, for me,
the vein was worked out and exhausted: utterly. I shall always recur
to the metaphor of the white road that you see from afar climbing
over the hill into unconjectured regions. For me that is literature;
the journey of discovery; the finding of a new world. When once I
have toiled painfully up that long road, and have stood on the other
side of the dark wood, and have looked upon the land beyond; then
all the joy, all the delight and thrill and wonder are over for me.
Columbus could not discover America twice. I never can say to myself:
“Look here! Let’s pretend that we’ve never been this way before,
that we don’t know in the least what’s beyond that turn of the road,
that anything may happen beyond that pine tree.” It won’t do.
And that is one reason why I beg my bread in my sixtieth year.
For, all that I have written on this matter is, doubtless, very
fine; but we must confess that when it is a case of literature being
exchanged for the money of the publisher--and the public--the affair
becomes a commercial one. And, in business, you buy a brand. Let me
try to imagine it! I am a wealthy man, and I have found and my guests
have found that last hamper of Champagne admirable. I go to my wine
merchant and order another hamper of the same vintage. Nay, he has
not got it; he will be happy to supply me with a wine of entirely
different character; or, to press the analogy a little extravagantly,
he no longer deals in Champagne at all, he doesn’t think much of
Champagne, it is an elegant lemonade, as one of Murger’s characters
expresses it, but he will be delighted to send me six dozen of a rare
Château wine of Bordeaux, an infinitely finer wine, as he assures me.
But I want Champagne! I am not going to stand such treatment for one
moment! The man must be mad! _De me fabula narratur_; all my life I
have been pressing my Bordeaux on people who had begun to think that
there might be something to be said for my small Champagne.
And I quite see the point. I have never read one of the horror
stories of Mr. W. W. Jacobs, though I am told that they are
admirable. For me, Mr. Jacobs must speak through an everlasting
Night Watchman, through an eternal countryman draining the last dregs
of his beer on the settle at the _Cauliflower_: with these immortals
I am happy.
“The Three Impostors” was published by John Lane some time in 1895.
But before sending the manuscript to Mr. Lane, I had tried Mr.
Heinemann. The firm wrote me a most delightful letter, full of the
most charming things, which I had some difficulty in swallowing,
though an author’s throat is capable of astounding feats where
praise is concerned. I was to go and see them, and I did so, my
heart beating high. I saw a member of the firm. He was better than
the letter for a swelling soul. He read extracts from the reader’s
report, and these were more splendid still. He outlined delightful
terms; he pressed on me the necessity of my having something on
account of royalties in advance: a happy possibility that had not
even dawned on me in 1894–95. He hoped that the House of Heinemann
might ever have the privilege of publishing my beautiful books.
“Better than the best of Stevenson”; thus he read from the optimistic
reader’s report. Thus elated, glorious, happy indeed, went down
Mr. Arthur Machen, man of letters--now there could be no doubt of
it!--from the amiable office, even into Bedford Street, seen for the
first time to be a shining thoroughfare, a veritable golden pathway
of Paradise, leading to the golden Strand, nay, to the golden world,
where all desires were accomplished, and the faithful servant is
rewarded: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Publisher.”
After all, I said to myself, the old toils, the old labours, those
unhappy nights, those sick days of despair were not altogether
wasted. Indeed, I tried to do my best; indeed, I grudged no labour;
indeed, I was patient and tore up the sorry page; I knew that I must
persevere and still persevere. And I knew that the other books were